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Wireless Electricity, Not So Far Off

In high school my bedroom had two outlets in use – one for a lamp, the other for my stereo. That was it.

Now my large studio is filled with maxed-out power strips juicing my laptop, computer monitor, external drive, printer, router, Wi-Fi router, TV, stereo and DVD player, not to mention cellphone and digital camera chargers, and of course those pesky lamps.

Power cords are my enemy. They so quickly and easily muck up a clean interior I’ve so painstakingly put together. For years I’ve fantasized of wireless electricity. A day when the power outlet became obsolete. Well, we’re almost there. Almost.

At this years’ Consumer Electronics Show, a handful of companies showed off flashy gadgets with pads that allow wireless charging. The pads work via a coil built into them that generates a magnetic field when plugged into an outlet. If you place a gadget with its own coil built into it on the pad, the magnetic field generates a current within the second coil, in turn charging the device.

Palm’s much-talked-about Pre, features such a pad. WildCharge built a pad that works with any phone as long as you attach their adapter to your mobile. While all of these are great steps towards a wireless world, the only way this will be adopted fully is if multiple items can be charged on the same pad. That’s where Fulton Innovation comes in.

The Michigan-based company has developed coils that can be embedded into tables and the like so you’ll eventually be able to power your blender, coffee maker, you name it, just by placing it on your kitchen counter. Bosch, the power tool manufacturer, and Texas Instruments have teamed up with the company and are working on building new products with the built-in coils.

Now you may remember that this padded electricity idea was tried once before. Splashpower, a British company, introduced own charging pads in 2004. They declared bankruptcy four years later with no products to speak of. So how’s this new crop of pads any different? They aren’t, because they use the same electromagnetic induction theory as their failed predecessors did, but now there’s an attempt to standardizing wireless electricity amongst the industry.

This past December the Wireless Power Consortium was formed. The group is dedicated to cementing a common standard for wireless charging. Hey, we may avoid another Blu-ray/HD-DVD kerfuffle! So far big players like Philips, Sanyo, Logitech, and Texas Instruments have all joined the W.P.C., along with the coil manufacturer Fulton Innovations. If they can agree on a single way to charge, we may soon be rethinking how we organize the tech in our homes. No more designing around the power outlet.

Surely it’s irresponsible to promote technologies like this without discussing how much energy would be lost in the process. I have heard that only a quarter of the energy at the socket makes it to the device. Please report this crucial info.

So, let me get this straight. . . I’m no longer going to plug my electronics in. I’m going to plug my TABLE in, and then pile all my electronics on it? I won’t have plugs in my kitchen, but I’ll have to have hard wired EMI coils embedded in my counter tops? Will I have as many as the six outlets I currently have in my (comparatively small) kitchen? Or will it be, honey, did you move the toaster off the power hot-spot before my bagel was toasted so you could blend your smoothie? Or is my countertop going to be one gigantic electromagnetic field? I think I might just get rid of some of the electronics.

Electric toothbrushes have used this for years. While the technology works well for low current devices like cellphone charges it is much more difficult to power kitchen appliances like toasters and frying pans. This is where the challenge lies.

I am very excited for something like this to be released to the public, being myself a college student restricted to a few outlets in a small apartment. I do feel it’s worth mentioning that wireless electricity was developed and demonstrated at the turn of the twentieth century by Nikolai Tesla. In 1899 he was able to wirelessly transmit 100 million volts of alternating current twenty six miles and power 200 light bulbs and an electric motor. Humorous that it takes over a century for them to find a way to use the technology and still make money off of it.

I’m curious about the efficiency of this. No cords are nice, but I can imagine huge kitchen counters using electricity to generate magnetic fields all day to power a coffee maker used once a day and a blender used once a week. Also, even if the device is used continuously or the magnetic field is delivered only when needed, I can’t imagine that the transfer of power from the charge pad to the device is as efficient as a regular old cord.

This is a terrible way to charge electronics. It would be far better to include a compact electromagnetic spectra converter in all new electronics. This way, electronics (like cell phones or laptops) would receive and recognize a particular wavelength of light or a particularly un-used radio frequency, and convert it to usable energy. Radio exists everywhere, light exists almost everywhere …. its perfect.

Actually wireless tech has been around for the longest of times and is employed in most devices. The average human just doesnt know how it works. Consider this DC is not a practical means of delivering electricity across long distances. So they use AC because it can go much further while keeping high voltages. Well there are lines and transformers along the way but what exactly causes the AC to turn into DC when you charge your phone. Most of you would say the charger, but what is inside of the charger is what is wireless. There is a gap about half an inch to an inch between the terminal ends(which plug into the wall) and the converting end the MAGIC SOLENOIDS. Basically it works like this the electricity comes into the socket and when plugged into creates an electromagnetic field per say. The oscillating waves of energy are then captured by the solenoid and forced into a circuit of capacitors and resistors and so forth to provide the energy needed. This method is extremely inefficient anywhere between 10-50 percent energy conversion. Well the larger the device the more AC that has to be converted.. It is true find out for yourself and open up a charger or better yet a broken computer power supply or converter. Thanks for reading and feel free to comment.
Jeremiah Brooks Sr

So you’ve got an inductor imbeded in your surface whose intent is to transmit energy to whatever item happens to get within its range. It’s generating a nice electro-magnetic field as a byproduct. I set down my purse, charging my cell phone, and take off my watch and earrings. Whoops! The watch battergy gets drained. The earrings and watch band get magnetized.

Those credit cards with that cool magnetic stripe? Completely erased. Same with any old cassette tapes, 3.5 inch floppies I might have been using (you do remember those, right?) or any other magnetic storage media I have in my care. Toast. Meanwhile, my jewelry and plastic are now a haven for bits of lint and small charged metallic particles.

That will make a fashion statement akin to “I hang out in a laundromat.”

As other posters have noted, the efficiency on this cool technology is terribly low. It’s better for for making magnets and impressing first-graders than it is for transmitting energy.

Nikolai Tesla discovered a century ago, wireless comms (Radio), AC current (defeating in the process DC current promoted by Thomas Edison), an wireless energy transfer, A.K.A. “Tesla Effect”.
Why are we so slow in catching up with great inventions? Maybe bypassing the power grid was a Sin in his time……no power connections fees?

It is shocking to hear this. Are we not talking of efficient energy usage. Gone are those days where we used a coiled ballast to light our fluroscent tubes. It looks likes seemingly mad when we talk of an induction coil to trap EM waves and convert them into electricity.

These devices are about 70% efficient, so yet another retrograde step in energy use. Add that on top of the charging station’s losses (always plugged in and doing nothing but wasting energy (aka “Vampire” load) waiting for the device to be put onto the charging coil).

In the winter not such a bad deal (wasted energy goes to heating, offsetting main heating) but in the summer that waste heat requires even more energy to remove it (air conditioning).

This is a really cool, nifty … and un-needed device for most applications. For things like cordless toothbrushes (what’s wrong with our hands and arms anyway?) and shavers it’s a good app due to water in the bathroom. Other than similar needs, these should be banned.

Really – our convenience (and this is a really minor advantage) should not be trumping broad goals to energy consumption.

We’ve already got wireless power. It’s called batteries. If anything, we should make solar-powered batteries with standard sizes for small household devices. Just keep an extra set on a sunny window sill and change them out whenever you need to. Once light bulbs move to LEDs, this could become quite feasible for lamps and desk lights.

This is another solution without a problem.
How about the electronics industry change to ‘switching’ power supplies to save power and standardizing the plugs, jacks and charging voltages that all devices use? There’s no reason one charger couldn’t support 1000’s of devices and charge 3 or 4 low current devices at once.
Oh wait I know, they make more on the extra wall charger & car charger than they do on the phone….

Small devices are ok (cellphones ect) but devices that pull noticeable power will be a problem not to mention possible health side effects from the EM field they would generate around you and your kids – there is a reason we don’t build schools under Power Lines ( this was a problem remember)

As many prior well informed writers have posted:
What a stupid idea.
Extremely inefficient and true wireless electrical transmission is about as close as deriving all our power from “cold fusion” reactors.

Nikolai Tesla sent electricity 26 miles wireless – BEFORE the1900 .Biggest inventor EVER . Father of ( the electricity you use today – first hydropower station at Niagara Falls ) and radio also (Highcourt ruling 1945 ) , not Marconi . Many of todays inventions use teslian tegnology !! I’m from South Africa and know more about American inventors than Americans themselves

Maybe I am dreaming but I want a room where there is one point and the gadget seeks out the power source wirelessly and request a charge and the power point sends pulses of power wirelessly to it. Is that asking too much?

I wonder how all those people who worry about magnetizing their jewelry and de-magnetizing their credit cards deal with the “problem” of melting the same (or setting them on fire) when placed on the cooking surface of a stove – especially flat “glass top” electric ones?

Here’s a simple concept: simply mark where the magnetic field is on the countertop . . . and don’t place items that can be harmed by the magnetic field (if any) there. It’s worked for stoves and other “complicated” devices for years.

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